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Wilson Hall, ASU (Photograph by Claudia Shannon)
Wilson Hall occupies the site of the original administration building, which burned in 1931, and is named for Robert E. Lee Wilson (see MS9), one of the initial trustees. The building established the precedent for much of the university’s architecture: blond brick walls and limestone details. The Art Deco building, though not lavishly decorated, was stylish, and its construction signaled a commitment to the future during a time of economic uncertainty. Throughout the years, Wilson Hall has housed many departments of the university. In 2016, the university and the New York Institute of Technology entered a collaborative relationship with the goal of providing medical professionals to the Delta, and the building was renovated as home to a College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Diagonally across the quadrangle from Wilson Hall is the Dean B. Ellis Library (1963, Stuck, Frier, Lane and Scott), to which in 1993 Brackett-Krennerich and Associates added an eight-story bell tower. The library and the tower geographically and symbolically mark the center of the campus. In reference to the tall rounded form of the tower, the architects compared its overall silhouette to the form of the rice mills that rise out of the flat Delta land.